


Our Forgotten Vales

by heartstone



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, Some Undetermined Time After The War of Wrath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 13:51:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15775386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: His bare feet melt the snow when he walks.The marbled ice sighs under his weight (too heavy), and he leaves behind warped little footsteps, puddles that mar the mirrored face of the frozen lake and blur the keen minerals that sparkle within its pale argent. The fur train of his overcoat smears the watery imperfections behind him like the tail of a comet spreading its lustrous dust, disintegrating into a pallid blue, diminishing as further it falls.***Mairon visits the ruins of Utumno.





	Our Forgotten Vales

I.

His bare feet melt the snow when he walks.

The marbled ice sighs under his weight _(too heavy),_ and he leaves behind warped little footsteps, puddles that mar the mirrored face of the frozen lake and blur the keen minerals that sparkle within its pale argent. The fur train of his overcoat smears the watery imperfections behind him like the tail of a comet spreading its lustrous dust, disintegrating into a pallid blue, diminishing as further it falls.

Mountains tower around him, enwreath him in grey rock glazed with unclouded ice. Their forms remain untarnished, as in his memory, each facet smooth and gleaming. The tops of the mountains loom over him as if to bend down and get a better look at this small disparity within the anemic landscape. They let him pass, the silent watchers, and the wind picks up one last time.

_(It had been lifetimes ago, but the mountains remember.)_

There is a small opening in the rock. Among the shimmering white it is difficult to find, but he could have found it blind. A small forgotten vale, where those iron guards meet and encircle, where their sheer ashen walls are laced by snowflakes and the ground is as a clear motionless pool that reflects the cosmos above, harsh needle-points threaded in the night.

He stands under the arch of its entry, the icicles that spear down from the stone above him, drip onto his hair when he stands by one too close for too long. The seconds drag on. He is no longer warm enough to turn the droplets into wisps of vapour and instead they pearl his hair as a dampened and faintly glowing ember from a dying fire coated in morning dew.

Stretched thin he becomes sickly and weak, a ghostly shell like weathered glass, like a candle burning too low. A flame struggles within him and when he sits on a fallen stone he sinks through its snowy cushion. Guilt seizes him, but he is numb _(and he is old and he is tired),_ so that when guilt claws him deeper with longing and self-hate he doesn’t have it in him to fight but lays down on the slab and lets it possess him.

In the aspect of his eyes the mists of time unveil, and below him are hazy reflections wherein a flame flickers, strong and bright.

 

II.

The earth is young and strong and he is a golden radiance that illumins the endless white and grey, christens it with burgeoning amber flame and sends a gentle warmth across its surface. Mairon dances along the brink of ice, encircles the vale and lets the frigid breath of the mountains through his hair, lets his fiery locks drop embers that twinkle behind him as he skates- like those from the tail of a comet spreading its lustrous dust, burning brilliantly, glowing brighter as further it falls.

The only light in the North, in all the earth, and he laughs like a bell, crisp and clear and ringing off into the far distance. He teases the sable darkness that ever chases him, unable to catch him, so swift is he _(so light),_ a glimmering beacon that capers and leaps and twirls just inches above the ice, never touching it save by the caresses of his light-beams and the thin silver blades on his feet.

Smoothly he moves across the breadth of the vale and turns, but by his design, slowly, and he puts on a feign when the darkness catches up to him, and surrounds him, and Mairon cries out in glee as they tumble onto a snowbank and Melkor  _(starless night and palest snow),_ falls onto him, glows faintly golden in the midst of his rays, which flicker under His intense scrutiny and playful tone:

“I haveth thee, wicked thing, eluding thine espoused with thine newest invention- why hath thou madest this, if only to goad? Yea, thine intent I knoweth well, and thou wilt get thine just guerdon.”

The darkness seeks to possess him, and he does not desire to fight back as a languid moan is drawn from him. He is pinned down against the fleecy snow he steadily melts, and kissed as harshly as the sparkling crystals that rime the mountain-sides. He mewls against those lips _(cold and smooth and pale),_ and squirms when Melkor lowers His head to bite his neck, and watches in some secret cunning as He unlaces the ties of those offending inventions.

Their eyes meet and they are timeless, and when they join the earth doesn’t know whether to freeze or to melt. The flame flickers, strong and bright, and the darkness follows his every touch, his every shimmer.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been really trying to slap my muse back into shape, but all I could get out was this little piece and its only because I re-read Sigurfox's "A Kaleidoscope of Touch" and it made me sad enough to write this D: This is your fault! But thank you, haha.  
> On a different note, Mairon inventing ice skates so he doesn't fall through the ice fields around Utumno is my new headcanon :D  
> ***


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